The Same Old Story

'Stephen Pearl's new translation of Goncharov's ''Obyknovennaya Istoriya,'' will introduce English speakers to a Russian classic that made its author famous, and which is just as amusing and fascinating as Goncharov's better known ''Oblomov,'' which probably owes its greater fame to the fact that the self-indulgence of the eponymous Oblomov became part of the Russian vocabulary. The same psychological insight that makes ''Oblomov'' so compelling permeates ''The Same Old Story'' with its con...